Winter Holiday Bow Mani

Now that the holidays are officially in swing, I’ve been thinking about manis for the holidays. I’m not quite ready this week to whip out the red and green, but I’ve been thinking in the iridescent and soft colors that I associate with winter, snow and cold.

Because guys, it got cold here over last weekend!

The week before, I picked up two nail art wheels from Sally’s – they’re from Cina – for $8.99 a piece and I couldn’t wait to break one open. I choose the wheel that had tiny, iridescent bows. I wanted bows. Then I decided to incorporate a recent franken – a purple/blue shimmer. Then I picked Obessesive Compulsive Cosmetics polish in Pool Boy as the base for it all, because it complemented my franken so well!

I wasn’t sure if it was going to be a real holiday-type mani, but I was excited to try it.

I’ve been experimenting with tape for nail art lately, too, so I incorporated that as well. Here’s Pool Boy:

I used this base as my mani Saturday night, and then on Sunday morning, I added tape to create a “V” coming from the base of my nails. Then I painted my franken in the V:

I let the polish dry a bit, because in my experimentation with tape like this, I’ve found that if I take it off too soon, it can mess up the lines of the polish. It didn’t matter. When I pulled the tape off, the polish was still tacky and it still disrupted the would-be perfect lines. But it wasn’t horribly off on all nails, just a couple, and probably mostly noticable in photos and close-up viewing.

After I removed the tape, I added a tiny dollop of top coat at the apex of the V and placed one of the tiny bows:

Here’s my mani. I’m sure I could have edited my photos to make it look more even, cleaner. But here it is, in all it’s honesty! And I’m not entirely unhappy with it, even if its not perfection.

Even though this is a wintery mani for me, the color scheme is translatable to any time of year. I imagine this would look neat with red and green, blue and silver, etc., to make it a true holiday mani!

So what do you think of this winter mani? Do you think of light blues and iridescent colors when you think of winter manis? I’d love to hear your thoughts!